Price Check 3: How Much Are You Paying for Milk, Meat, Bread and Beer?

by Michael Y. Park

on 02/16/09 at 02:44 PM

Lemon boy in Boston, 1917.

It's that time again.

In our continuing quest to help Epicurious readers figure out whether they're paying more or less than everyone else, I'm asking you all to take part in a consumer-oriented experiment that will require you to do a little legwork.

And what do you have to do, exactly? Just shop for groceries and get gas this week, as usual. Except you bring a pen and a piece of paper, too. And the more of you who take part, the better.

Become a part of the Epi-Log experiment team after the jump.

You may remember the first round of the experiment in August, and the second one in December. A lot's happened over those few months, and it'll be interesting to see if that's reflected in our results.

In the first go-round, food sellers were still citing skyrocketing gas prices as the reason they were raising food prices.

In the second round of the experiment, the Wall Street collapse had happened, and gasoline prices had plummeted. Yet, as we discovered, food prices curiously remained about the same.

Here's what you should do, if you'd like to participate:

1. Go to your local market, deli or the place you normally buy food, and write down the listed prices for a gallon of whole white milk, a pound of
ground chuck, a 24 oz. loaf of white Wonder Bread/Country Hearth/a comparable generic white bread, and a six-pack of
Budweiser beer in cans.

No bellyaching about white bread and Bud: I'm trying to
only include items that everyone can find anywhere in the U.S. You
only have to buy the items if you want to, of course.

If your state
laws don't allow beer sales in grocery stores, it's perfectly
acceptable to get beer prices from a place that does sell beer legally.

Go for the cheapest available brands of milk, beef, etc., when there's
a choice, but stick to Budweiser and Wonder Bread/Country
Hearth/generic white, please.

2. At a gas station nearby, note the price of a
gallon of regular unleaded gas.

3. Come back here to Epicurious, and write the
following in the comments section of this post, preferably in this
format, so it's easier for me to read and work with:

- The town and state you checked the prices (e.g., Dexter, Mich.).- The kind of establishment where you checked the prices (e.g., Busch's Value Mart Land supermarket, mom & pop deli, etc.)-
The products and their prices, preferably in the following order: bread: $0.xx, milk: $x.xx, beef: $x.xx,
beer: $x.xx.- And any comments about the experience or suggestions you might have.

Here's what I will do:

After we've got enough data, I will gather all the data from this round's poll,
compare it to the results from the other polls, and post the
results.